Crafting, parenting and getting my geek on.

Happy New Year (I’m always late to the party)

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You know how people sometimes pick a word for the year? Or a theme? I tried to think of a word that would encompass everything I’ve been feeling, the direction I wanted to go and what I want to bring into my life. It’s a tricky business. You want your word to be positive, motivating and meaningful to you so that you won’t just give up the whole thing by February. I kept coming back to ‘light’ which is is terribly vague, isn’t it? I’m keeping it though and adding ‘lighten up’.

Between the word and the little phrase I think I have all of my bases covered for what I want to achieve in 2016 and what I want to carry forward with me. In a literal sense, I want more light in my life and my home – I have plans to re-paint a room or two with lighter colours (or white!) and to do some major re-organization and de-cluttering to make the spaces look and feel lighter. This goes for the side yard of our house, too. I want to clear it up and take down an old bit of fence that’s doing nothing but holding up a half dead wisteria. I’d like that space to be more usable and friendly for The Kid to run around in.

I’m also going to be focusing on my health and fitness this year with a goal to losing at least 50lbs (yikes) and therefore physically lightening myself. My desire to lose the weight isn’t coming from a sense of being uncomfortable in my skin and I’m not looking for a quick fix. If I reach even the half way point of my goal by years end I’ll consider that a win and carry on. The biggest reason for wanting to see some changes physically is to hopefully help my fertility. It’s been a struggle, going through infertility and secondary infertility. That struggle has spanned a number of years and a number of dress sizes so I’m not putting all my eggs (ha!) in one basket and hoping that this will suddenly be the magic cure but hey, it can’t hurt, right? I think I’ll add in some acupuncture and maybe give some Eastern medicine a shot (since I’m a little disgruntled with Western medicine at the moment).

And that brings me to the figurative side of my word of the year. After a miscarriage in 2014, another at the start of 2015 and the unexpected death of our youngest cat just before Christmas, I feel like I’ve been carrying so much sadness and grief with me. It’s exhausting. I won’t just be packing that all up and hiding it away but I’m going to make an effort to bring more happiness in and lighten up my heart. I will always, always grieve for my lost babies but I would rather honour their memory by living as happily as I can. And for my daughter, who I am so, so lucky to have, I don’t want her memories of me to be that I was always sad or angry. I don’t expect this process to be easy, especially since we’re still actively trying for a successful pregnancy but I think working on it and acknowledging the feelings when they arise will be helpful.

That feels like kind of a downer note to leave this post on so here’s a photo of a kitten using a laptop.